India's most admired business leaders

India's most admired business leaders

Who is India's most admired business leader? We asked your opinion on this a few days ago. Thousands of you enthusiastically voted for the business leader of your choice.

Now, the verdict is in! Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata was voted to be head and shoulders above any other business leader in India by an overwhelmingly 60 per cent of the votes in his favour.

Infosys co-founder and chairman N R Narayana Murthy was the second most admired business leader in India, followed by Mukesh Ambani and others. . .

To check out the complete ranking, browse through to the last slide. . . and in case you missed out on casting your vote, you can still do so . . .

From the License Raj to the post-liberalisation era, Indian business has travelled a long way. During this journey, several men and women have radically changed the business scenario in India and elsewhere. Here is a list of those brilliant men and women who in recent times have shaped the course of India Inc:

Ratan Naval TataChairman, Tata Group

In 1991, he took over as group chairman from J R D Tata, pushing out the old guard and ushering in younger managers.

Under his guidance, Tata Consultancy Services went public and Tata Motors was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1998, Tata Motors introduced his brainchild, the Tata Indica.

On January 31, 2007, Tata Sons successfully acquired Corus Group, an Anglo-Dutch steel and aluminium producer. The merger created the fifth largest steel producing entity in the world. On March 26, 2008, Tata Motors bought Jaguar & Land Rover from Ford Motor Company.

Ratan Tata's dream was to manufacture a car costing Rs 100,000. He realised his dream by unveiling the Nano in New Delhi Auto Expo on January 10, 2008. It was finally launched on March 23, 2009.

India's most admired business leaders

He took the Godrej Group to great height even during controlled economy era.

An industrialist and a philanthropist, Godrej modernised and systematised management structures and implemented process improvements.

After India's economy was opened up, Godrej restructured the company's policies to meet the challenges of globalisation.

In the early 2000s, the Group completed a 10-year restructuring process through which each business became a stand-alone company with a CEO/COO from outside the Godrej family.

Godrej, a major supporter of the World Wildlife Fund in India, has developed a green business campus in the Vikhroli township of Mumbai, which includes a 150-acre mangrove forest and a school for the children of company employees.

India's most admired business leaders

At the age of 21 he took over the family business -- Western India Vegetable Product Company -- when his father, M H Premji, suddenly passed away in 1966.

The Western India Vegetable Product later became Wipro Products Ltd, Wipro Technologies and Wipro Corporation.

Under Premji's leadership Wipro embarked on an ambitious phase of expansion and diversification. The Company began manufacturing light bulbs with General Electric and other consumer products including soaps, baby care products, shampoos, powder

In the 1980s Wipro entered the IT field, taking advantage of the expulsion of IBM from the Indian market in 1975.

Premji is known for his modesty and frugality in spite of his wealth. He drives a Toyota Corolla, flies economy class prefers to stay in company guest houses.

Premji has been recognised by Business Week as one of the greatest entrepreneurs globally.

In 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, for his outstanding philanthropic work.

His wife, Sudha Murthy, also helped him set up his VC fund by giving him Rs 430 crore (Rs 4.3 billion) which she got by selling quarter of her stake in Infosys.

Murthy siad, "I want Infosys to be a place where people of different genders, nationalities, races and religious beliefs work together in an environment of intense competition but utmost harmony, courtesy and dignity to add more and more value to our customers day after day."

India's most admired business leaders

A first generation entrepreneur, Mittal started his first business -- to make crankshafts for local bicycle manufacturers -- in April 1976 at the age of 18, with a capital investment of Rs 20,000 borrowed from his father.

In 1980 he sold his bicycle parts and yarn factories and moved to Mumbai. In 1984, he started assembling push-button phones in India.

In 1992, he successfully bid for one of the four mobile phone network licences auctioned in India. His plans were finally approved by the government in 1994 and he launched services in Delhi in 1995.

Bharti Cellular Limited offered services under the brand name AirTel. In November 2006, he struck a joint venture deal with Wal-Mart, the US retail giant, to start a number of retail stores across India.

In July 2006, he attracted many key executives from Reliance ADAG, NIS Sparta and created Bharti Comtel.

Mittal, failed in his bid to buy South African telecom giant MTN, but was successful in buying Zain Telecom of Kuwait.

India's most admired business leaders

As of July 2010, Mukesh Ambani was the richest man in Asia and the fourth richest man in the world with a personal wealth of $29.0 billion.

He joined Reliance Industries in 1981. He directed and led the creation of the world's largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar with a current capacity of 660,000 barrels per day (33 million tonnes per year) integrated with petrochemicals, power generation, port and related infrastructure.

In August 2010 Reliance announced a $392 million stake in an American natural gas interest located in central and northeast Pennsylvania.

Reliance has also purchased significant stakes in the shale gas assets of Atlas Energy Inc and Pioneer Natural Resources.

India's most admired business leaders

At HSBC she has held positions as chief executive officer and deputy chief executive officer of HSBC Bank in India and managing director aof HSBC Securities and Capital Markets India Private Limited.

She became the group's country head in 2009.

Kidwai has repeatedly ranked in the Fortune global list of Top Women in Business, 12th in the Wall Street Journal 2006 Global Listing of Women to Watch ad listed by Time magazine as one of their 15 Global Influentials 2002.

India's most admired business leaders

In 1944, when he was 20, Munjal along with elder brothers Dayanand, Satyanand and younger brother Om Prakash came from Kamalia (now in Pakistan) and settled in Amritsar.

The brothers initially started a business by supplying components to manufacturers of bicycles in and around Amritsar.

After the partition in 1947 the Munjal family completely shifted their base from Pakistan to Ludhiana.

Slowly they expanded their distribution network and by early 1950s they were supplying components of bicycles throughout India.

In 1954, Hero Cycles Ltd moved up the value chain by making a shift from supplying to manufacturing. In 1984, the Hero Group started a joint venture with Japan's Honda Group, to manufacture motorbikes.

India's most admired business leaders

He founded Sterlite Industries in 1976 and then in 1986 established Vedanta Resources bringing together a variety of businesses owned by the Agarwal family.

Then followed a spate of acquisitions both in India and overseas -- and with it came the controversies, since many of them, such as Bharat Aluminium and Hindustan Zinc, involved public sector undertakings over which there was much resistance, mainly political.

Recently he acquired up to 60 per cent of British energy giant Cairn's Indian arm -- which is into oil and gas exploration -- for around a whopping $9.5 billion.

The Indian government, however, rejected his bauxite-mining project in Orissa, citing environmental issues on August 24, 2010.

India's most admired business leaders

Ambani joined Reliance in 1983 as co-chief executive officer and is credited with having pioneered many financial innovations in the Indian capital markets.

One of his major achievements in the entertainment industry is the takeover of Adlabs, the movie production to distribution to multiplex company that owns India's only dome theatre and the joint venture worth $825 million with Steven Spielberg.

Ambani was in talks with Everton officials over a deal to takeover the club. Before this he was also on the brink of buying Newcastle United.

India's most admired business leaders

Along with Ajai Chowdhry (chairman, HCL Infosystems), Arjun Malhotra (CEO and chairman, Headstrong), Subhash Arora, Yogesh Vaidya and D S Puri, he started Microcomp to sell teledigital calculators in the Indian market under the brand name Televista.

HCL was founded later in 1976 with an investment of Rs 187,000 from the 6 founders and Uttar Pradesh government was added as 26 per cent equity partner.

Nadar took HCL Technologies public in 1999.

His partnernship with Singapore Telecom to address the now-booming Indian Telecom market was unsuccessful as well as his attempts in the granite and aquaculture business.